Day 6 of The Cabo Verde World Cup

With the Cabo Verde PWA World Cup all done and dusted, we took the opportunity to talk to the PWA World Wave Champion and event runner up, Kauli Seadi about his second place, Angulo’s home advantage and those quad fins.

Having won this event last year, are you still stoked on coming second, or are you only happy when you’ve won?KS: “I don’t care so much about the result, but more the way I perform. It would really bother me if I had lost and not given it my best shot. If I lose doing my best then at least I know I’ve tried my hardest, and that’s all I can do. So sure I’m happy with second place.”

So were you happy with the way you sailed in the final?KS: “I tired my best, and you know, maybe I could have done some things slightly better, but I tried hard to give my best. In the end maybe I didn’t pick the biggest sets, but I still sailed a good heat.”

Do you think Josh had an advantage over you having all the local fans cheering his waves, and helping him out when he went on the rocks?KS: “I think a little bit for sure. It’s like football, when you have the local fans behind you, it gives you an advantage over the opposition; in the same way Josh has that extra boost from the locals here. But I also had a lot of people come up to me and say ‘we like you and we’re going to cheer for you’, so I don’t think it’s a massive advantage for Josh, but it helps.”

What do you think you would have had to have done differently to beat Josh in the finals?KS: “People were trying to help me out and give me a formula to beat Josh. You know, they were saying ‘go for aerials’, but that’s his style of riding. My style is different and I read the wave differently. On the sets where he might do an aerial, I’ll go for a curve or a floater. I just connect it differently. I only go for an aerial if I’m late and I have to, I don’t go looking for aerial sections. But in the second heat I thought I’d try to go for more aerials as the judges seemed to score that higher. That meant I was out there doing something that wasn’t really me, and I sailed like I wouldn’t have really sailed. I don’t think there’s a formula to winning, you’ve just got to sail your own style well.”

You were sailing on a quad fin in the final. Are you just experimenting with them, or do you think you’ll start using them all the time over your twinsers?KS: “At the moment it’s an experiment. I hope they work well, and for sure I’ll use them over the twinsers if they work out. It’s a whole new project and there’s a lot of work to do still. Over the last few days I’ve tried six different sets of fins and I’m playing around with positioning, the mast track, everything. It’s like learning to windsurf all over again, but I think they can bring something else. It’s easy to just stay where you are, and it can be hard to say, ‘OK lets take the next step’. It takes time, and at first you might not perform as well as you were on the old set up, but with testing and tuning you might end up way ahead of where you were before.”

Do you think the industry will pick up on them?KS: “With the twin fin, I was using it a year before everyone else, and at first people were saying it wouldn’t work, then they saw how they performed and they liked it. It’s not a fashion thing, you know I just want to try out all the possibilities you can have. If it makes sense, for sure I think they’ll take off. If it doesn’t work, then whatever, at least I tried.”

With Ponta Preta still receiving a healthy dose of ground swell, day two wasted no time in capitalizing on the situation. Breaking smaller than the previous day, sets were anything from shoulder to logo high, making wave selection absolutely crucial.